Chasidut for Sanhedrin 197:13

Deuteronomy 26,18. “and Hashem on His part ‎has guaranteed you this day to be His treasured people, as He ‎had said to you.” The next verse spells out the result of G’d ‎having avouched the Jewish people, i.e. ‎ולתתך עליון על כל הגוים ‏אשר עשה לתהלה לשם ולתפארת‎, “and to make you high above ‎all the other nations that He has made in praise, in name, and ‎in glory;”‎
In trying to explain this verse we are stymied by the fact that ‎the word: ‎לשם‎ does not precede the words: ‎לתהלה ולתפארת‎.
This apparent anomaly is explained with the help of the ‎statement in the Talmud Sanhedrin 99 that repentant ‎sinners occupy a spiritual plateau that is higher than that of the ‎natural born righteous people, who have never sinned. It is ‎explained additionally by a statement in the Talmud Yuma 86 that ‎the effect of repentance is so great that erstwhile sins may be ‎converted retroactively into being accounted as meritorious ‎deeds.‎
G’d’s servants may be divided into two distinct categories. ‎One category has a mental image of G’d and what He stands for in ‎front of him at all times, whereas the second category arouses ‎itself from time to time in order to summon up such an image of ‎G’d’s Majesty, which in turn impresses upon him the duty to ‎serve Him as befits a king. This latter type of individual does not ‎present the Creator with a list of personal requests, however. He ‎is content to be able to serve his Master the King of Kings, in fact ‎he regards it as a privilege. This latter type of individual requests ‎only that he be able to continue to serve the Lord, and while so ‎engaged he shuts out any thoughts pertaining to his daily ‎routine, pursuit of a livelihood, etc. He places his entire person at ‎the service of the Lord. It is this type of individual that the ‎psalmist in psalms 102,1 speaks of when he commences with the ‎words: ‎תפלה לעני כי יעטוף‎, “a prayer of the lowly man when he is ‎faint, etc.” When such a person, notwithstanding the fact that he ‎has urgent duties to attend to, duties that do not allow him the ‎luxury of putting them on hold, offers his entire being in the ‎service of the Lord, this is something that causes G’d to ‎experience a great deal of pleasurable satisfaction. He reacts by ‎saying: “look at this human being, who, although guilty of ‎numerous sins in the past, has pulled himself together in order to ‎serve Me;” he deserves that even his prior sins be converted to ‎merits,” as it was the recognition of the futility of his former ‎sinful lifestyle that eventually caused him to become a penitent. ‎Someone raised in a devout family, who had accepted his family’s ‎devoutness as something that did not need to be questioned, ‎could not have entertained the kind of thoughts that went ‎through the mind of the repentant sinner before he decided to ‎turn over an entirely new leaf.‎
When G’d looks down on the Jewish people and compares ‎them to the gentile nations, and He sees how none of them serve ‎Him, He naturally glorifies in the Jewish people, considering the ‎rest of mankind a bunch of fools by comparison.

These considerations prompted the Talmud in ‎‎Sanhedrin 99 to state ‎במקום שבעלי תשובה עומדים צדיקים ‏גמורים אין יכולים לעמוד‎, “perfectly righteous people, i.e. those who ‎have never tasted sin, cannot take their place next to repentant ‎sinners, as the latter have struggled much harder to rehabilitate ‎themselves after having tasted the immediate benefits in this life ‎of having sinned.” The repentant sinner provided G’d with much ‎greater pleasure when he repented than the ‎צדיק גמור‎, the ‎unblemished righteous person who had never been exposed to ‎temptation and had conquered it. The repentant sinner had ‎proven that it is possible to break the hold that the evil urge had ‎claimed over him after he had established this hold as a result of ‎his victim having succumbed to temptation the first time.‎
This is the deeper meaning of the Mishnah in ‎‎Avot 2,1 where Rabbi Yehudah hanassi described what ‎is a successful course for man to follow in life as being to provide ‎‎“glory,” ‎תפארת‎ for His maker. The second part of Rabbi Yehudah’s ‎statement that man’s actions should also “confer glory on ‎האדם‎, ‎‎“the person having performed these deeds,” our author views as ‎meaning that man should appreciate that his “glory” consists in ‎being able to do what no angel can do, i.e. serve the Lord and ‎provide Him with pleasure due to his having had to overcome ‎obstacles in his desire to serve his Maker. This is the “glory” G’d ‎had bestowed on man. If you were to say that Rabbi Yehudah ‎ascribes this “glory” as emanating from “man,” i.e. ‎מן האדם‎, what ‎Rabbi Yehudah meant by the word ‎מן‎, “from,” is “that it ‎originates from,” i.e. man’s glory originates in the very fact that ‎he is “man,” equipped with choices so that making the right ‎choice results in joy in heaven as well as on earth.‎